As a marketer, you must always strive to better understand customer habits and predict how prospects will react to your marketing efforts. But how?
Data and analytics can help your team better understand buyer personas and buying habits, give you the ability to rework strategies and tactics to adapt to your customers’ buying cycle, and maximize predictability. Digital tools also offer new opportunities to learn about customers and improve efforts to reach them. In order to effectively use the information you gather, think strategically about the metrics you measure and what they mean, and then try these tips.
Social media data and web analytics offer your company a wealth of buyer insights. Use the demographic and psychographic information, including age, gender, and interests provided by tools like Facebook Page Insights, Google Analytics, and Twitter Analytics to reshape your buyer personas. Who is really engaging with your content, and who is following through to make a purchase? What do these people care about most?
If your firm is still using buyer personas created from guesses about your target audience, it’s time to make updates. Digital campaigns yield engagement and conversion information that can tell you more about your real potential buyers than any brainstorming session.
Sales-based metrics are key to understanding buying habits. Track how interactions across campaigns and platforms have led to the development of sales qualified leads (SQLs). Use data from past campaigns to set marketing goals and evaluate marketing performance.
Your company can also consult secondary marketing research to learn more about buying habits across your industry. Combine these insights with your own data for a holistic picture of your audience and how to best reach potential buyers.
Digital tools have changed marketing. Stop relying on outdated ideas about the buying cycle, including the “rules and tools” that defined marketing best practices for so long. According to Forrester Research, a B2B buyer’s journey is often 90% over before sales is contacted, so expect to spend as much time proving your worth as you do educating them about your service. Employ social listening and engagement and advanced analytics to learn about what your customers and potential customers need, and when they need it. Then, message around those needs.
It’s time to get smarter about how you reach those with purchasing power. Improved predictability can help your company efficiently connect with and influence the buyers who matter. How are you putting data to work?
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